Matt found this picture of a black bear, and sketched up an excellent pattern. The bear does not fit easily into a 9 x 13 rectangle. Optimizing efficient use of the cake while minimizing the number of pieces required some creativity.

When I presented the pattern as a gift, before making the cake, Mom recognized immediately that it was a bear, and Dad that it was a cake pattern, but it took them a minute or two to pool their information.

Dad did the cake photography honors, which involved some precarious ladderwork and required extensive experimentation and consultation with instruction manuals. I had been charmed by the rustic effect of leaving the cake board dirty, with no idea it was going to make the cake so tricky to photograph.

Since the cake/frosting/topping combo from the recent Sasquatch cake was so successful, we did something similar for the bear.

Inspired by our success with egg white frosting, I thought I would try a seven-minute frosting. I was puzzled by the cooking instructions in the 1990's Joy of Cooking, so I used the ingredients for Seven-Minute Brown Sugar Frosting from JoC and the preparation technique for Dear Abby cake frosting. This scheme worked well. I made a one and a half times recipe, but a single recipe would have been plenty. Ingredients for a single recipe are: